A super PAC supporting Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for New York City mayor accepted $1,000 from a Muslim cleric linked to the architects of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist plots.
Imam Siraj Wahhaj donated to the super PAC Unity and Justice Fund in May, days before it funneled most of its money to a PAC exclusively supporting Mamdani for mayor, campaign finance records show.
Wahhaj has called for an Islamic state in America, and Mary Jo White, formerly the Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, named him among involved people who are “unindicted persons” in the trial of a terror plot mastermind praised by Wahhaj as “a strong preacher of Islam.” White’s memo also said that the people on that list “may be alleged as co-conspirators,” but Wahhaj was never charged.
Unity and Justice Fund, Mamdani’s campaign and Wahhaj, who leads the Brooklyn-based mosque Masjid At-Taqwa, did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation. Wahhaj has denied any involvement in criminal conspiracies since the trial and called the FBI and CIA “the real terrorists.”
Three children of Wahhaj also received life sentences in 2024 on terrorism, kidnapping and conspiracy to murder charges for organizing a jihadist training compound in New Mexico used to plot attacks against the U.S. government, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). Wahhaj told the press that he helped police find the training compound by reporting its location to the authorities.
In 1995, prosecutors named the imam among dozens “who may be alleged to be co-conspirators” in the trial of several men convicted of planning a terrorism campaign that included the first World Trade Center attack, court records show. The 1993 bombing killed six people and injured more than a thousand others, while the other violent plans were thwarted. Al Qaeda terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers eight years later in the 9/11 attacks.
Defense lawyers used Wahhaj in the 1995 case as a character witness for Omar Abdel-Rahman, a cleric who later served a life sentence, according to media reports and court documents. Prosecutors said Abdel-Rahman, commonly known as “the Blind Sheikh,” helped orchestrate plans to murder hundreds of Americans, attack a U.S. military installation and assassinate Egypt’s then-president. Several people connected to the World Trade Center bombing attended or visited Wahhaj’s Brooklyn mosque around the time of the massacre. Abdel-Rahman died in 2017.
Wahhaj testified that he had met Abdel-Rahman on multiple occasions and called him a “respected scholar.” By that time, Abdel-Rahman had already been a founder and spiritual leader of an Egyptian militant group that the State Department later designated a terrorist organization.
“He has memorized the many statements of Prophet Mohammed, peace and blessings be upon him,” Wahhaj said in court. “And he is bold, as a strong preacher of Islam.”
Wahhaj has long drawn controversy by advocating for America’s form of government to end.
“In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing. And the only thing that will remain will be Islam,” Wahhaj once said in a sermon, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The cleric told an audience at a 2011 conference that it’s problematic for Muslims to discuss whether Sharia law should govern America, though he didn’t rule out the idea. “The trap that we fall into is having a premature discussion about Sharia when we’re not there yet,” Wahhaj said.
Wahhaj said Mamdani, who calls himself Muslim, is a “very good candidate” for New York City mayor in a June 16 Instagram video, encouraging Muslims to vote for him.
Mamdani, the socialist state lawmaker, was officially declared the Democratic nominee on July 1 with 56% of the vote, beating more moderate establishment Democrats in the city’s ranked-choice voting system.
Mamdani has seen widespread support from the left’s pro-Palestinian factions over his stances on Middle East conflicts. Voices on the left and the right criticized him since June for refusing to disavow the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which activists have made into a rallying cry despite it historically being tied to terrorism against Jews. Mamdani said the slogan symbolized “a desperate desire for equality.”
After Wahhaj’s May 22 donation to Unity and Justice Fund from a Georgia address, the super PAC gave $25,000 to the pro-Mamdani super PAC New Yorkers for Lower Costs, records show. The rest of Unity and Justice Fund’s spending for May — $8,876.70 — went toward operational expenses and not to any other political campaigns, according to its Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings. The super PAC’s website carries a disclaimer saying that the PAC is “not expressly or otherwise authorized or requested by any candidate or the candidate’s committee or agent.”
The $25,000 from Unity and Justice Fund in May was a portion of more than $100,000 the group has given to different pro-Mamdani PACs, records show.
Unity and Justice Fund Treasurer Basim Elkarra also directs a political lobbying arm of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). In a partially-redacted document from 2013, the DOJ referred to CAIR as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the 2007 trial of activists from the Holy Land Foundation who were later sentenced for funding Hamas. CAIR has denied any support for, or ties to, terrorism, despite the DOJ finding that it belonged to a “Palestine Committee” that a Hamas official led to advance the group’s interests in the U.S.
CAIR Action, the lobbying group, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
